OPPOSE BOOK WORSHIP

Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right
to speak on it. Isn't that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not
probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know
nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be
nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why
is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always
keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful.
How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?

You can' t solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts
and its past history! When you have investigated the problem thoroughly,
you will know how to solve it. Conclusions invariably come after investigation,
and not before. Only a blockhead cudgels his brains on his own, or together
with a group, to "find solution" or "evolve an idea" without making any
investigation. It must be stressed that this cannot possibly lead to any
effective solution or any good idea. In other words, he is bound to arrive
at a wrong solution and a wrong idea.

There are not a few comrades doing inspection work, as well as guerrilla
leaders and cadres newly in office, who like to make political pronouncements
the moment they arrive at a place and who strut about, criticizing this and
condemning that when they have only seen the surface of things or minor details.
Such purely subjective nonsensical talk is indeed detestable. These people
are bound to make a mess of things, lose the confidence of the masses and
prove incapable of solving any problem at all.

When they come across difficult problems, quite a number of people in leading
positions simply heave a sigh without being able to solve them. They lose
patience and ask to be transferred on the ground that they "have not the
ability and cannot do the job"; These are cowards' words. Just get moving
on your two legs, go the rounds of every section placed under your charge
and "inquire into everything''[1] as Confucius
did, and then you will be able to solve the problems, however little is your
ability; for although your head may be empty before you go out of doors,
it will be empty no longer when you return but will contain all sorts of
material necessary for the solution of the problems, and that is how problems
are solved. Must you go out of doors? Not necessarily. You can call a
fact-finding meeting of people familiar with the situation in order to get
at the source of what you call a difficult problem and come to know how it
stands now, and then it will be easy to solve your difficult problem.

Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy, and solving
a problem to the day of birth. To investigate a problem is, indeed, to solve
it.

Whatever is written in a book is right — such is still the mentality
of culturally backward Chinese peasants. Strangely enough, within the Communist
Party there are also people who always say in a discussion, "Show me where
it's written in the book." When we say that a directive of a higher organ
of leadership is correct, that is not just because it comes from "a higher
organ of leadership" but because its contents conform with both the objective
and subjective circumstances of the struggle and meet its requirements. It
is quite wrong to take a formalistic attitude and blindly carry out directives
without discussing and examining them in the light of actual conditions simply
because they come from a higher organ. It is the mischief done by this formalism
which explains why the line and tactics of the Party do not take deeper root
among the masses. To carry out a directive of a higher organ blindly, and
seemingly without any disagreement, is not really to carry it out but is
the most artful way of opposing or sabotaging it.

The method of studying the social sciences exclusively from the book is likewise
extremely dangerous and may even lead one onto the road of counter-revolution.
Clear proof of this is provided by the fact that whole batches of Chinese
Communists who confined themselves to books in their study of the social
sciences have turned into counter-revolutionaries. When we say Marxism is
correct, it is certainly not because Marx was a "prophet" but because his
theory has been proved correct in our practice and in our struggle. We need
Marxism in our struggle. In our acceptance of his theory no such formalisation
of mystical notion as that of "prophecy" ever enters our minds. Many who
have read Marxist books have become renegades from the revolution, whereas
illiterate workers often grasp Marxism very well. Of course we should study
Marxist books, but this study must be integrated with our country's actual
conditions. We need books, but we must overcome book worship, which is divorced
from the actual situation.

How can we overcome book worship? The only way is to investigate the actual
situation.

Do you doubt this conclusion? Facts will force you to accept it. Just try
and appraise the political situation or guide the struggle without making
any investigation, and you will see whether or not such appraisal or guidance
is groundless and idealist and whether or not it will lead to opportunist
or putschist errors. Certainly it will. This is not because of failure to
make careful plans before taking action but because of failure to study the
specific social situation carefully before making the plans, as often happens
in our Red Army guerrilla units. Officers of the Li
Kuei[2] type do not discriminate when they punish
the men for offenses. As a result, the offenders feel they have been unfairly
treated, many disputes ensue, and the leaders lose all prestige. Does this
not happen frequently in the Red Army?

We must wipe out idealism and guard against all opportunist and putschist
errors before we can succeed in winning over the masses and defeating the
enemy. The only way to wipe out idealism is to make the effort and investigate
the actual situation.

This is our answer to the question: Why do we have to investigate social
and economic conditions? Accordingly, the object of our investigation is
all the social classes and not fragmentary social phenomena. Of late, the
comrades in the Fourth Army of the Red Army have generally given attention
to the work of investigation, [3] but the method
many of them employ is wrong. The results of their investigation are therefore
as trivial as a grocer's accounts, or resemble the many strange tales a country
bumpkin hears when he comes to town, or are like a distant view of a populous
city from a mountain top. This kind of investigation is of little use and
cannot achieve our main purpose. Our main purpose is to learn the political
and economic situation of the various social classes. The outcome of our
investigation should be a picture of the present situation of each class
and the ups and downs of its development. For example, when we investigate
the composition of the peasantry, not only must we know the number of
owner-peasants, semi-owner peasants and tenant-peasants, who are differentiated
according to tenancy relationships, but more especially we must know the
number of rich peasants, middle peasants and poor peasants, who are
differentiated according to class or stratum. When we investigate the composition
of the merchants, not only must we know the number in each trade, such as
grain, clothing, medicinal herbs, etc., but more especially we must know
the number of small merchants, middle merchants and big merchants. We should
investigate not only the state of each trade, but more especially the class
relations within it. We should investigate the relationships not only between
the different trades but more especially between the different classes. Our
chief method of investigation must be to dissect the different social classes,
the ultimate purpose being to understand their interrelations, to arrive
at a correct appraisal of class forces and then to formulate the correct
tactics for the struggle, defining which classes constitute the main force
in the revolutionary struggle, which classes are to be won over as allies
and which classes are to be overthrown. This is our sole purpose.

What are the social classes requiring investigation?

They are:

The industrial proletariat
The handicraft workers
The farm labourers
The poor peasants
The urban poor
The lumpen-Proletariat
The master handicraftsmen
The small merchants
The middle peasants
The rich peasants
The landlords
The commercial bourgeoisie
The industrial bourgeoisie

In our investigation we should give attention to the state of all these classes
or strata. Only the industrial proletariat and industrial bourgeoisie are
absent in the areas where we are now working, and we constantly come across
all the others. Our tactics of struggle are tactics in relation to all these
classes and strata.

Another serious shortcoming in our past investigations has been the undue
stress on the countryside to the neglect of the towns, so that many comrades
have always been vague about our tactics towards the urban poor and the
commercial bourgeoisie. The development of the struggle has enabled us to
leave the mountains for the plains.[4] We have
descended physically, but we are still up in the mountains mentally. We must
understand the towns as well as the countryside, or we shall be unable to
meet the needs of the revolutionary struggle.

The aim of our struggle is to attain socialism via the stage of democracy.
In this task, the first step is to complete the democratic revolution by
winning the majority of the working class and arousing the peasant masses
and the urban poor for the overthrow of the landlord class, imperialism and
the Kuomintang regime. The next step is to carry out the socialist revolution,
which will follow on the development of this struggle. The fulfilment of
this great revolutionary task is no simple or easy job and will depend entirely
on correct and firm tactics on the part of the proletarian party. If its
tactics of struggle are wrong, or irresolute and wavering, the revolution
will certainly suffer temporary defeat. It must be borne in mind that the
bourgeois parties, too, constantly discuss their tactics of struggle. They
are considering how to spread reformist influences among the working class
so as to mislead it and turn it. away from Communist Party leadership, how
to get the rich peasants to put down the uprisings of the poor peasants and
how to organize gangsters to suppress the revolutionary struggles. In a situation
when the class struggle grows increasingly acute and is waged at close quarters,
the proletariat has to depend for its victory entirely on the correct and
firm tactics of struggle of its own party, the Communist Party. A Communist
Party's correct and unswerving tactics of struggle can in no circumstance
be created by a few people sitting in an office; they emerge in the course
of mass struggle, that is, through actual experience. Therefore, we must
at all times study social conditions and make practical investigations. Those
comrades who are inflexible, conservative, formalistic and groundlessly
optimistic think that the present tactics of struggle are perfect, that the
"book of documents"[5] of the Party's Sixth National
Congress guarantees lasting victory, and that one can always be victorious
merely by adhering to the established methods. These ideas are absolutely
wrong and have nothing in common with the idea that Communists should create
favourable new situations through struggle; they represent a purely conservative
line. Unless it is completely discarded, this line will cause great losses
to the revolution and do harm to these comrades themselves. There are obviously
some comrades in our Red Army who are content to leave things as they are,
who do not seek to understand anything thoroughly and are groundlessly
optimistic, and they spread the fallacy that "this is proletarian". They
eat their fill and sit dozing in their offices all day long without ever
moving a step and going out among the masses to investigate. Whenever they
open their mouths, their platitudes make people sick. To awaken these comrades
we must raise our voices and cry out to them:

This is the only way to get near the truth, the only way to draw conclusions.
It is easy to commit mistakes if you do not hold fact-finding meetings for
investigation through discussions but simply rely on one individual relating
his own experience. You cannot possibly draw more or less correct conclusions
at such meetings if you put questions casually instead of raising key-questions
for discussion.

2. What kind of people should attend the fact-finding meetings?

They should be people well acquainted with social and economic conditions.
As far as age is concerned, older people are best, because they are rich
in experience and not only know what is going an but understand the causes
and effects. Young people with experience of struggle should also be included,
because they have progressive ideas and sharp eyes. As far as occupation
is concerned, there should be workers, peasants, merchants, intellectuals,
and occasionally soldiers, and sometimes even vagrants. Naturally, when a
particular subject is being looked into, those who have nothing to do with
it need not be present. For example, workers, peasants and students need
not attend when commerce is the subject of investigation.

3. Which is better, a large fact-finding meeting or a small one?

That depends on the investigator's ability to conduct a meeting. If he is
good at it, a meeting of as many as a dozen or even twenty or more people
can be called. A large meeting has its advantages; from the answers you get
fairly accurate statistics (e. g., in finding out the percentage of poor
peasants in the total peasant population) and fairly correct conclusions
(e.g., in finding out whether equal or differentiated land redistribution
is better ). Of course, it has its disadvantages too; unless you are skillful
in conducting meetings, you will find it difficult to keep order. So the
number of. people attending a meeting depends on the competence of the
investigator. However, the minimum is three, or otherwise the information
obtained will be too limited to correspond to the real situation.

4. Prepare a detailed outline for the investigation.

A detailed outline' should be prepared beforehand, and the investigator should
ask questions according to the outline, with those present at the meeting
giving their answers. Any points which are unclear or doubtful should be
put up for discussion. The detailed outline should include main subjects
and sub-headings and also detailed items. For instance, taking commerce as
a main subject, it can have such sub-headings as cloth, grain, other necessities
and medicinal herbs; again, under cloth, there can be such detailed items
as calico, homespun and silk and satin.

5. Personal participation.

Everyone with responsibility for giving leadership — from the chairman
of the township government to the chairman of the central government, from
the detachment leader to the commander-in-chief, from the secretary of a
Party branch to the general secretary — must personally undertake
investigation into the specific social and economic conditions and not merely
rely on reading reports. For investigation and reading reports are two entirely
different things.

6. Probe deeply.

Anyone new to investigation work should make one or two thorough investigations
in order to gain full knowledge of a particular place (say, a village or
a town) of a particular problem (say, the problem of grain or currency).
Deep probing into a particular place or problem will make future investigation
of other places or problems easier.

7. Make your own notes.

The investigator should not only preside at fact-finding meetings and give
proper guidance to those present but should also make his own notes and record
the results himself. To have others do it for him is no good.

NOTES

2. Li Kuei was a hero in the well-known Chinese novel shui
Hu Chuan' (Heroes of the Marshes) which describes the peasant war that occurred
towards the end of the Northern Sung Dynasty (960-1127). He was simple, outspoken
and very loyal to the revolutionary cause of the peasants, but crude and
tactless.

3. Comrade Mao Tse-tung has always laid great stress on
investigation, regarding social investigation as the most important task
and the basis for defining policy in the work of leadership. The work of
investigation was gradually developed in the Fourth Army of the Red Army
on Comrade Mao Tsetung's initiative. He stipulated that social investigation
should be a regular part of the work, and the Political Department of the
Red Army prepared detailed forms covering such items as the state of the
mass struggle, the condition of the reactionaries, the economic life of the
people and the amount of land owned by each class in the rural areas. Wherever
the Red Army went, it first made itself familiar with the class situation
in the locality and then formulated slogans suited to the needs of the
masses.

4. Here 'the mountains' are the Chingkang mountain area
along the borders of Kiangsi and Hunan Provinces; the 'plains are those
in southern Kiangsi and western Fukien. In January 1929, comrade Mao Tse-tung
led the main force of the Fourth Army of the Red Army down from the Chingkang
Mountains to southern Kiangsi and western Fukien in order to set up two large
revolutionary base areas.

5. The "Book of documents" consisted of the resolutions
adopted at the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in
July 1928, including the political resolution and the resolutions on the
peasant question, the land question, the organization of political power,
etc. Early in 1929 the Front Committee of the Fourth Army of the Red Army
published these resolutions in book form for distribution to the Party
organizations in the Red Army and to the local Party organizations.